First Thing: Austrian chancellor to meet Putin in Russia | US news

Good morning.

Austria’s chancellor is to meet Vladimir Putin on Monday, the Russian president’s first face-to-face meeting with an EU leader since ordering the invasion of Ukraine, amid warnings of a fresh offensive and shelling in the east.

Karl Nehammer said the meeting would take place in Moscow and that Austria had a “clear position on the Russian war of aggression”, calling for humanitarian corridors, a ceasefire and full investigation of war crimes.

Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser in Washington, has warned that the appointment of a new general in command of Russia’s military campaign is likely to usher in a fresh round of “crimes and brutality” against civilians. Alexandr Dvornikov, 60, came to prominence at the head of Russian troops in Syria in 2015-16, when there was particularly brutal bombardment of rebel-held areas, including civilian populations, in Aleppo.

• What might Russia do next? The UK Ministry of Defence warned on Monday morning that Russian forces may resort to using phosphorous weapons in Mariupol as fighting for the city intensifies. It cited the previous use of the munitions by Russian soldiers in Donetsk.

• What else is happening? Here’s what we know on day 47 of the invasion.

Liz Cheney disputes report January 6 panel split over Trump criminal referral

A key Republican on the House January 6 committee disputed a report that said the panel was split over whether to refer Donald Trump to the Department of Justice for criminal charges regarding his attempt to overturn the 2020 election, leading to the Capitol attack.

“There’s not really a dispute on the committee,” the Wyoming representative Liz Cheney told CNN’s State of the Union.

The New York Times said otherwise on Sunday, in a report headlined: “January 6 panel has evidence for criminal referral of Trump, but splits on sending.”

“The debate centers on whether making a referral – a largely symbolic act – would backfire by politically tainting the justice department’s expanding investigation into the January 6 assault and what led up to it,” the paper said.

Citing “members and aides”, the Times said such sources were reluctant to support a referral because it would create the impression Democrats had asked the attorney general, Merrick Garland, to investigate Trump.

• What did Cheney say? “We have not made a decision about referrals on the committee … [but] it’s actually clear that what President Trump was dealing with, what a number of people around him were doing, that they knew it was awful. That they did it anyway.”

France faces bruising runoff after Macron and Le Pen top first-round vote

France faces a brutal two-week campaign over the country’s future, as the centrist incumbent, Emmanuel Macron, faces the far-right Marine Le Pen for the presidency, positioning himself as a pro-European “progressive” against what he calls her anti-Muslim, nationalist programme and “complacency” about Putin.

Macron topped Sunday’s first round of the French presidential election with 27.6% of the vote, ahead of Le Pen’s 23.4%, according to initial projected results by Ipsos for France Télévisions.

He scored higher than his result in the first round five years ago, and clearly gained support in the final hours of the campaign after his harsh warnings to voters to hold back the far right and protect France’s place on the international diplomatic stage during the war in Ukraine. But Le Pen’s score was also higher than five years ago.

• Why is Le Pen doing better this time? She had steadily gained support after campaigning hard on the cost of living crisis and inflation, which had become voters’ biggest concerns.

• What has Macron said? He told reporters: “When the far-right, in all its forms, represents that much in France, you can’t consider things are going well, so you must go out and convince people with a lot of humility, and respect for those who weren’t on our side in this first round.”

In other news …

• A federal judge has indicated that an attempt to stop the far-right Republican congressperson Marjorie Taylor Greene running for re-election will be allowed to proceed. The challenge from a group of Georgia voters says Greene should be disqualified because she supported insurrectionists on 6 January 2021.

• After dozens of botched, evidently painful lethal injections in recent years, prisoners in at least 10 states have been making a surreal argument: they would prefer the firing squad. As more “technological” methods have proved grisly, some states are considering shooting prisoners instead.

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